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Wednesday, May 08, 2013

The Glorious Chant of "Angels and Saints at Ephesus"

A beautiful new album from the Benedictines of Mary,
Queen of Apostles, helps us make room in our lives for truth.

Everybody likes singing Sisters. I remember as a child
hearing the music that my mother liked to play. They were vinyl records and
sometimes my memory can still recreate the voices of those women religious.

Today the delivery method has changed. Direct
digital downloads are now possible. Recently, some liturgical chants have
been finding their way out from the Priory of Our Lady of Ephesus and into the
world by way of the digital path.

The Sisters there live a life of union with God in prayer according
to the Rule of St. Benedict. They have a love for the traditional liturgy and
devote themselves in a special way to prayerfully interceding for the sacred
priesthood and to making vestments and altar linens. Founded in 1995, this
young, monastic order of Sisters sings together eight times a day, chanting the
Divine Office in Latin.

Their previous album with De Montfort Music and Decca
Records, Advent at Ephesus, was a big
hit last year. This week, their new album, Angels
and Saints at Ephesus, is released. It contains a nice selection of
hymns and chants from various liturgical occasions.

Nine-time International Grammy-winning producer Christopher
Alder (from Germany) and two-time Grammy-winning engineer Mark Donahue worked
together to capture the sound of the Sisters in their contemplative
environment. Because the music comes forth from the genuine liturgical life
lived by the Sisters, it has an authenticity and purity that gives it a special
charm.

I think that if we make a deliberate effort to integrate
this sort of music into our own daily practices, we can, when we listen to it,
create a space in our lives that helps us replace ugliness with beauty. We can
thereby dwell in a place where we become better able to contemplate truth and
to grow in our understanding of truth.

The reason I emphasize this link between beauty and truth is
because Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, when he was still a cardinal, made a very
important speech on this theme. It was called, “Wounded By the Arrow of Beauty,”
and it is still available in a book from Ignatius
Press.

“The encounter with beauty can become the wound of the arrow
that strikes the soul and thus makes it see clearly, so that henceforth it has
criteria, based on what it has experienced, and can now weigh the arguments
correctly,” said then-Cardinal Ratzinger.

Beauty thus serves a great purpose. It educates our
perceptions in order that we may proceed to grasp truth better. As Ratzinger
explained it, beauty “brings us into contact with the power of truth.” The danger, however, is that an album such as Angels
and Saints at Ephesus becomes just another commodity in the
marketplace. And if we are honest, we will observe that such has often been the
case with previous instances of hit records of sacred music. (Anyone remember
the Gregorian chant craze from a while back?)

The problem is that people sample an exotic new thing only
for a while. They enter into its spirit only in a superficial way. They soon
move on to something else that becomes a newer source of distraction or
excitement in their lives.